A Woman of Substance (37 page)

‘I’ll never part with these,’ Emma said aloud, swallowing hard as her eyes misted over. She laid them on the floor and poked around in the box. There was a small cameo brooch and
a silver ring, both of which she examined with interest. She tried on the ring. It fitted her perfectly. Her hand went back into the box and her fingers lighted on the gold cross and chain her mother had almost always worn. Emma grimaced. She wanted no reminders of God, who no longer existed for her. That was why she refused to go to Sunday school, even though her truancy annoyed her dad. She dropped the cross and chain on the floor next to the garnets, and lifted out a string of amber beads that were large and cool to her touch. They glowed with a deep golden colour, and to Emma’s eye they had distinction. They had been a gift from a very grand lady, so her mam had told her several years ago.

After studying her new possessions for a few minutes longer, Emma began to replace them in the wooden box. It was at this moment that she felt something lumpy underneath the velvet which lined the bottom. She ran her fingers around the edge of the box. The velvet was loose and she was able to lift it up very easily. Its removal revealed a locket and a pin. Emma took out the locket and looked at it with curiosity. She did not remember ever noticing her mother wearing it. In fact, she had never seen it before. It was old, and beautifully worked, and made of real gold that glinted brightly in the light. She tried to open it, without success. She stood up, and hurried to find the scissors in her sewing box. After a few seconds, and with a little pressure, she was able to prize it open. There was a photograph of her mother on one side, taken when she was a girl. The other side was empty. Or was it? Emma looked more closely and saw that in place of a photograph there was a small lock of fair hair.

I wonder whose hair it is, she thought, trying to lift the glass covering it. But this was so firmly embedded in the locket she knew that if she prized at it too hard with the scissors it could easily shatter. Emma closed the locket and turned it over in her hands inquisitively. It was then that she saw the engraving on the back. It was indistinct and almost worn away by time. She could hardly make it out. She looked at it again, screwing up her eyes. Finally she brought the candle over to the trunk, and held the locket under the flickering flame.

The letters were very faint indeed. Slowly she read aloud, ‘A to E—1885.’ Emma repeated the date to herself. That was nineteen years ago. Her mother had been fifteen in 1885. Did E stand for Elizabeth? It must, she decided. And who was A? She could not remember her mother ever mentioning anyone in the family with a name beginning with A. She decided she would ask her father when he came back from the pub later. Emma now placed the gold locket most carefully on top of the black dress, and fingered the pin, peering at it closely. How odd that her mother should have owned such a pin. She frowned. This was the kind of stickpin a gentleman wore in his cravat or stock, most probably with riding clothes, since it depicted a miniature riding crop with a tiny horseshoe set in the centre. It was also made of gold, she could tell that, and it was obviously valuable. It had certainly never belonged to her father.

Emma shook her head and sighed, rather mystified, and she automatically placed the locket and pin where they had reposed before, covered them with the velvet lining, and then put the remainder of the jewellery away in the wooden box. Methodically she returned all of the other items to the trunk and closed the lid, still shaking her head in bafflement. There was no doubt in Emma’s sharp mind that the locket and the pin had been hidden by her mother, for some unknown reason, and this both puzzled and intrigued her. She decided then not to mention them to her father after all, although she was not quite sure what prompted this decision. She picked up her sewing box, blew out the candle, and went downstairs.

The kitchen was shadowy in the dim light emanating from the two candles on the table. Emma lit the paraffin lamps on the mantelshelf and the dresser, and carried the basket of mending she had brought home from the Hall over to the table, where she sat down to do her sewing. She worked first on a blouse belonging to Mrs Wainright, and then began to repair the hem on a petticoat of Mrs Fairley’s. Poor Mrs Fairley, Emma thought, as she plied her stitches, she’s as strange as ever. Quiet and sullen one minute, gay and chattering away the next. Emma would be relieved when Mrs Wainright returned from Scotland, where she was visiting friends. She
had only been away for a fortnight, but it seemed like months. The Hall was not the same without her presence, and a peculiar nervousness was beginning to invade Emma with increasing regularity, and it bothered her not a little, since she found this acute edginess incomprehensible.

The Squire had also gone away, for the grouse shooting, so Cook had told her. He wouldn’t be returning until the end of the week, far too soon to suit Emma’s tastes. Things were quiet enough at the Hall, and, with Mrs Wainright and the Squire absent, Emma’s duties had lessened. That was why Mrs Turner had let her have Friday off, as well as Saturday and Sunday. ‘Spend a bit of time with yer dad, luv,’ Mrs Turner had said, adding sympathetically, ‘He needs yer right now, Emma.’ And so she had spent three whole days at home this weekend, cleaning and washing and cooking for her dad and Frank. The only thing that had spoiled it was the fuss about Winston’s disappearance earlier in the week. In Emma’s mind, the interminable discussions were ridiculous, since there was no apparent solution to the problem.

Emma smiled suddenly to herself. Because there was less supervision at the Hall, she had been able to slip up to the moors on some sunny afternoons, to sit under the crags at the Top of the World, with Master Edwin. They had become firm friends during his summer holidays from boarding school.

Emma had become the recipient of many of Edwin’s confidences. He told her all sorts of things, about his school, and the family, and most of them were special secrets she had promised never to reveal to a single soul. When Edwin had walked her across the moors on Thursday afternoon, he had told her that a great friend of his father’s was arriving in a week’s time, as a weekend guest. He was coming all the way from London, and he was a very important man, according to Edwin. A Dr Andrew Melton. Edwin was excited about the impending visit, because the doctor had just returned from America, and Edwin wanted to know all about New York. Not even Cook had been informed yet, or even Murgatroyd. Edwin had made her swear not to tell, and she had even had to say, ‘Cross me heart and hope ter die,’ as a reassurance to
Edwin, making the appropriate gestures as well, crossing her heart and raising her right hand solemnly.

Emma’s thoughts of Fairley Hall, and, more particularly, of Edwin, ceased abruptly as her father came in from the pub, just as the church clock was striking ten o’clock. She recognized at once that he had been drinking more than usual. He was unsteady on his feet, and his eyes were glazed. When he took off his jacket to hang it on the peg behind the front door he missed the peg, and the jacket dropped to the floor.

‘I’ll get it, Dad. Come and sit down, and I’ll make yer some tea,’ Emma said, putting aside the petticoat and rising quickly.

Jack picked up the coat himself, and this time he managed to hook it on to the peg. ‘I don’t want owt,’ he mumbled, turning into the room. He took several jerky steps towards Emma and stopped. He stared at her for a long moment, astonishment flickering on to his face. ‘Thee has such a look of thee mam sometimes,’ he muttered.

Emma was surprised by this unexpected remark. She did not think she looked like her mother at all. ‘I do?’ she said questioningly. ‘But me mam had blue eyes and darker hair—’

‘Thee mother didn’t have no widow’s peak either, like thee does,’ Jack interjected. ‘That thee inherited from me mother, thee grandma. But still an’ all, thee bears a striking resemblance ter thee mam, right this minute. When she was a girl. It’s the shape of thee face, and thee features mostly. And thee mouth. Aye, thee’s getting ter look powerfully like thee mam as thee gets older. Thee is that, lass.’

‘But me mam was beautiful,’ Emma began, and hesitated.

Jack steadied himself against the chair. ‘Aye, she was that. Most beautiful lass by here thee ever did see. Weren’t a man in Fairley didn’t have his eye on thee mam at one time or t’other. Bar none. Aye, thee’d be right surprised if thee knew—’ He bit off the rest of this sentence, and mumbled something unintelligible under his breath.

‘What did yer say, Dad? I didn’t hear yer.’

‘Nowt, lass. Nowt that matters now.’ Jack regarded Emma through his bleary eyes, which were, none the less, still quite discerning, and he half smiled ‘Thee’s also beautiful. Like thee mam was. But, thank God, thee’s made of sterner stuff.
Elizabeth was very delicate. Not strong like thee.’ He shook his head sadly and moved uncertainly across the floor. He kissed her on the forehead and muttered his goodnight, and then he mounted the stone stairs, looking so much more pathetically diminished in size Emma wondered if he would be called
Big
Jack ever again. She sat down on the chair, gazing absently at the candle flame that flared so brightly before her eyes. She wondered what would become of her father. He was like a lost soul without her mother, and she knew he would never be the same. This realization filled her with a terrible sadness, for she was also aware there was nothing she could do to ease his acute pain, or the burden of his grief, which was total. He would mourn her mother until the day he himself died.

Eventually Emma roused herself from her reflections, picked up the petticoat, and continued sewing. She worked late into the night, doggedly determined to finish the repairs and alterations of the clothes from the Hall. Mrs Wainright paid her extra for this work, and Emma’s crucial need for money enabled her to ignore her tired eyes, her aching fingers, and the general fatigue that gradually settled over her as the hours ticked by. It was well turned one o’clock in the morning when she folded away the last of the garments and crept upstairs to bed, avidly calculating the exact amount of money Mrs Wainright now owed her.

Once a year the grim and savage moors of the West Riding lose their blackened and colourless aspects. At the end of August a momentary transformation takes place practically overnight, when the heather blooms in such a burst of riotous colour the dun-tinted hills blaze with a sudden and glorious splendour. Wave upon wave of purple and magenta roll across the Pennines, crowning the dark industrial valleys below with a stunning beauty that is breathtaking even to the most jaundiced eye.

The vast plateau of moorland that sweeps up above Fairley village, and which is part of that great Pennine Chain, is no exception. Here, too, the sombre harshness is obliterated through September and into October. It is almost as if an
immense bolt of local cloth has been flung generously across the hills, the weft and the warp of the weave a mixture of royal purple and blues and twists of green. For on the heathery slopes grow harebells and fern and bilberry, and even the scant gnarled trees are agleam with the freshest and smallest of fluttering leaves.

Larks and linnets glide up into the lucent air, and the sky, so often weighted down with rain-filled clouds, is dazzlingly blue and blazing with that incredible clarity of light so peculiar to the North of England. Not only is the relentless environment gentled and softened at this time of year, but the awesome silence of the winter is suddenly broken by the liveliest of sounds. The hillsides are all seamed by deep and narrow valleys and dells, each with its own tumbling little beck of clear water rushing down over polished brown stones, or sparkling with shimmering waterfalls that drop, unexpectedly, from the perilous rocky crags. Consequently, the sound of falling water is ever present on the Yorkshire moors in the summer months, accompanied by the sweet piercing trilling of the birds, the scurrying of the rabbits amongst the bilberry and bracken, the occasional bleat of the sheep that wander aimlessly over the heather-coloured hills seeking sustenance.

Emma Harte had a particular love of the moors, even in those grim and bitter winters when they became so brutal and frightening. Like her mother before her, she was at home there, up in that solitary hill country where, in her stark solitude, she never felt lonely or alone. She found in their vastness, in their very emptiness, a certain solace for whatever ailed her, drew a strange yet reassuring comfort from that imposing landscape. To Emma it was always beautiful through the everchanging seasons, and most especially so in the late summer when the heather bloomed so profusely and with incredible brilliance.

On this Monday morning in August her spirits lifted considerably as she climbed over the stile into the long meadow, vividly green and speckled with daisies. She hurried along the narrow path, occasionally looking up, her deep-green eyes scanning the rising hills, lilac-tinted and running into purple beneath a sky that was china blue and without a single cloud.
The sun was already seeping through the faint bluish haze on the horizon, staining it to golden, and she knew it would be another scorching hot day, as it had been all month.

For once she was glad to leave the cottage in Top Fold. Her father’s distress about Winston’s rapid departure had depressed her all weekend, and it was with a sense of relief that she had closed the cottage door and headed for the Top of the World. In that powerful and compelling wilderness, up there in that bright air, so purely bracing at this early hour, she felt free and unfettered, for Emma was a true child of the moors. Born and bred among them, it was as though their very characteristics had long ago penetrated her own soul, for she was as untameable and as relentless, and they were as much a part of her nature as the very breath she drew.

As a small child she had run unchecked over the high ridges and through the narrow valleys and little dells, her only companions the birds and the small timid creatures that inhabited the region. There was not a spot she did not know, and know well. She had her favourite places, well-guarded secret places, hidden in the crevices of the rocks and the folds of those wild hills, where all manner of pretty flowers blossomed when least expected and larks made their nests and crystal water tumbled over rocky slopes, scintillating icily in the sunlight, cool to drink and paddle in barefooted, toes curling deliciously on the dappled stones.